RPO -- James Kenneth Stephen : The Ballade of the Incompetent Ballade-Monger

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James Kenneth Stephen (1859-1892)

The Ballade of the Incompetent Ballade-Monger

1I am not ambitious at all:

2 I am not a poet, I know

3(Though I do love to see a mere scrawl

4 To order and symmetry grow).

5 My muse is uncertain and slow,

6I am not expert with my tools,

7 I lack the poetic argot:

8But I hope I have kept to the rules.

9When your brain is undoubtedly small,

10 'Tis hard, sir, to write in a row,

11Some five or six rhymes to Nepaul,

12 And more than a dozen to Joe:

13 The metre is easier though,

14Three rhymes are sufficient for 'ghouls,'

15 My lines are deficient in go,

16But I hope I have kept to the rules.

17Unable to fly let me crawl,

18 Your patronage kindly bestow:

19I am not the author of Saul,

20 I am not Voltaire or Rousseau:

21 I am not desirous, oh no!

22To rise from the ranks of the fools,

23 To shine with Gosse, Dobson and Co.:

24But I hope I have kept to the rules.

25Dear Sir, though my language is low,

26 Let me dip in Pierian pools:

27My verses are only so so,

28 But I hope I have kept to the rules.

Notes

7] argot: slang (French).

15] go: energy, spirit.

19] the author of Saul: probably Robert Browning (1802-1889).

20] Voltaire: French satirical author (1694-1778), e.g., of Candide.
Rousseau: Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), French philosopher and writer.

23] Gosse: Sir Edmund William Gosse (1849-1928), translator, poet, and man of letters, sometimes attacked for carelessness in his writing.
Henry Austin Dobson (1840-1921), a light-verse poet and a close friend of Gosse.

26] Pierian pools: the nine Muses were worshipped at Pieria in Macedonia.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: J. K. Stephen, Lapsus Calami, new edn. (Cambridge: Macmillan and Bowes, 1891), pp. 39-40. PR 5473 S4L3 1891 Robarts Library.
First publication date: 1891
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/2/6

Rhyme: ababbcbc ababbcbc ababbcbc bcbc

Other poems by James Kenneth Stephen